


Various Splashings of Fic

by dashakay



Category: The Fall (TV), The X-Files, The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:44:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 6,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4753592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A smattering of ficlets too short to post on their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness

**Author's Note:**

> All titles by e.e. cummings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

Right after it’s over, for several minutes all they can do is get their breathing under control. And then there’s an awkward silence as they both realize the import of what they’ve just done. 

Scully suddenly feels strangely shy, realizing she’s naked and wrapped in Mulder’s arms finally. Finally.

Mulder wonders if she really came or if she was faking it to be kind to him. He can still taste her on his lips. 

She has to pee but she’s afraid to break the spell because she doesn’t know what will happen next. He kisses her at her temple and she closes her eyes and smiles. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, pulling her closer to him. He breathes in the scent of her hair, her sweat, the last traces of her perfume at her temple.

“Mmm,” she says. The speech center of her brain has taken a brief vacation to Bermuda. She can still feel the pleasure in her legs, her feet, her toes, even.

“Are we okay?” He’s almost, but not quite, afraid of the answer.

She rubs her cheek against his chest like an affectionate cat. Scully will never admit to him how many times she’s fantasized doing just that.

“Are we?” He’s impatient.

In the dark of Mulder’s bedroom she rolls her eyes. Of course they’re okay. They’ll always be okay. 

Her answer is a kiss. Just one kiss, a promise, a pact, a declaration of all she wishes she could say but cannot.


	2. till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dana Scully/Stella Gibson

Scully thinks she’s in a hotel room but two single-malt scotches and some hardcore flirting in a dark bar later she can’t remember exactly where it is or how she got here. 

Lost time. It doesn’t matter. She’s not alone. 

Finally, she has all she needs. She tips her head back on the pillow, her mouth opening to moan in pleasure. There’s a good chance she’s waking the good people on the other side of the wall but she doesn’t care, not when she’s on the verge of coming for the second time. No, make it the third. 

She’s wanted this for so long, has spent too many lonely nights curled in her bed wishing for a night like this where she’s finally being touched, being loved. Finally feeling the breath and body of the lover she’s craved for much too long, strong fingers and wet tongue.

It sneaks up on her this time, first a faint tingling that almost itches and then blooms into a full-bodied quake that spreads to every limb. Scully’s moan turns to a sharp cry.

This is it. She’s no longer alone.

After what feels like a multicolored eternity, the pleasure fades to tiny tremors. She opens her eyes and inhales desperately needed oxygen. 

Scully hears a full-bodied chuckle. Stella lifts her blonde head from between Scully’s thighs, her sly smile just visible in the dim light. 


	3. let's live suddenly without thinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

She stretches on the chaise lounge, letting the warmth sink into her limbs. It’s the hottest summer on record for years in Banff, and beads of sweat trickle down her temples. She tries to relax, to tense each muscle in her body, hold it for ten seconds and then slowly release. Progressive muscle relaxation, something a therapist taught her years ago. It usually works but not right now. She’s waiting for him.

It’s odd how impatient she is. She saw him just weeks ago, the wonderful and crazy night of his show in New York, when she joined him onstage and he kissed her to the uproarious cheers of the crowd. She played the tambourine. The tambourine, for God’s sake.

It’s not like the old days, when they saw each other once a year, here in this small cabin in the Rockies.

Breathing in the clean, mountain air, she waits. It’s driving her ever so slightly mad.

Finally, she hears the screen door to the deck slide open and the familiar sound of his footsteps on the deck. She keeps her eyes closed, her heart rate speeding up in time with his strides.

“Hey,” he says, casually, as if he’d just popped out for a moment to pick up some milk and eggs at store.

She opens her eyes, blinking in the sun. She watches him kneel beside her, his eyes hooded and unreadable until he smiles.

“Hey, yourself,” she says and pulls him to her, catching him in a kiss, long and slow. He tastes like the cinnamon gum he loves.

His hands slide up her tank top and she gasps at the sensation as he lightly pinches a nipple.

“Come here,” she says and he does. He’s always so obedient here in this place hidden from the world.

He pushes her skirt up and her panties down, unzips his jeans, and he’s on her, around her, inside her, all at once.

Each time here feels like the first time, like being an overwhelmed young actress besotted with her older, arrogant, disgustingly handsome costar. She’s no longer a forty-six year-old woman, married twice with three children. She’s back in Vancouver, shivering in a chilly hotel room while he drives hard into her, her hips meeting each insistent thrust.

From somewhere outside her body, she hears herself crying out and his sounds echoing hers as they move together on the chaise. He says her name in a low and raspy voice deep from the back of the throat and she can’t hold back anymore.

She lets the surge wash her away, over the deck, and into the cold, blue waters of glacial lake far below them.

When she returns to the chaise lounge, he’s still there, smiling at her crookedly and breathing hard. She touches his face, the mole on his cheek. Their history, all twenty-two years of it, is etched on his face.

“It’s nice to see you again,” she says.


	4. the holy city which is your face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

She leans back on her bed pillows, listening to the rasp of his voice. It’s late and she should be fast asleep but she doesn’t want to end this call.

“I’ve got to go,” he says. “Haircut.”

“Oh no,” she sighs. “Buzz cut time?”

“Yep. You don’t like it?”

“It’s no fun to run my fingers through hair that short,” she says, stifling a yawn.

He chuckles and she pictures his laugh lines. “I’ll wear a wig the next time I see you.”

“That’s my job.”

“As soon as we’re done shooting, I’ll get some Viagra so it grows faster.”

She laughs so hard she has to put down the phone for a second. “Don’t you mean Rogaine?” she says after she’s caught her breath.

“Yeah that, too.”

“That’s the last thing you need,” she says, closing her eyes and remembering their final night together in Vancouver and how they didn’t sleep one minute, not one minute at all.

“I do if I want to keep up with you,” he says and the call disconnects.

She drops the phone on the mattress and smiles, dreaming of Vancouvers to come.


	5. your drowsy lips where float flowers of kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

There’s nothing as quiet as a truly first-rate hotel. The Ajit Bhawan does not disappoint. The streets of Jodhpur not only feel far away but on another dimensional level entirely. All he can hear is the whoosh of the air conditioning and the even cadence of her sleep breathing.

By all rights, he should be fast asleep himself, having survived more than twenty-four hours in transit. Fifteen hours from Newark to Mumbai. Seven hours in the first class lounge, vaguely dozing in an overstuffed chair and eating soggy samosas. Just over a hour in the air to land in Jodhpur, in the heart of the desert state of Rajasthan. More than an hour waiting for his luggage to appear and shambling through the customs line. And then the long drive through traffic-snarled night streets to the hotel, where she was waiting for him in the lobby, wearing a turquoise silk tunic and a strangely shy smile.

Yes, he should be sleeping the sleep of the weary traveler but he’s afraid to close his eyes for too long, to miss out on anything.

She’s sleeping with her head on his chest - cheek to his nipple, her hair tickling his skin. Propped up on several embroidered pillows, he watches the rise and fall of her chest and how her eyes move behind closed eyelids. He wonders what she’s dreaming of. The dusty, ancient streets of this city? Or does she dream of something more familiar, the rain-slicked windows of her London house?

She’s always loved to sleep on him, as if he’s a particulary comfortable and familiar piece of furniture. Exhausted nights in Vancouver over the summer, fresh from her shower, she’d drape her wet body all over him, creating damp patches on his t-shirts and the sheets.

His fingers tangle in her hair and he closes his eyes. He tries to breathe in sync with her. Slow, barely perceptible inhale. Two second pause. Strong exhale through the nose. He opens his eyes again. He can smell the bergamot of her perfume and the sharper smell of sex on the sheets.

There’s a selfish part of him that wants to wake her, to spread her legs and taste all the places of hers he’s been daydreaming about since they left Vancouver. To hear her sleepy moans and whimpers as she lazily lifts her hips from the mattress. But she’s had a long day too, and deserves her sleep. His will come later. He can wait. Maybe even forever as long as he’s alone in a quiet room with her head on his chest.

Eyes stubbornly open in the dark hotel, he doesn’t sleep, not one minute until the sun emerges from behind the horizon to illuminate the streets and alleys of Jodhpur.


	6. a connotation of infinity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

1\. 

That time in Vancouver, so long ago, when she sneaked into his hotel room. He was dead asleep after 16 hours of shooting, but she crept into his bed and found he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Brushing her hair out of her eyes, she took him into her mouth, warm and a little salty. After about thirty seconds she heard his sleepy chuckle.

2\. 

In the limo after the Golden Globes, his hand slid up her dress, his hand on her thigh. It had been so long since he’d touched her like that. Her skin was so warm. Her lipstick tasted like currants and cloves. She wore no panties beneath that dress. Hot and sticky like taffy, he thought as she tipped her head back on the leather seat and keened.

3\. 

After Paley they were buzzed from the lights, the questions, the energy from the audience. They barely made it into her hotel room before he was pressing her against the wall, her dress bunched around her waist, her underwear tossed in the general direction of the bedroom. It’s been so long, too long, she thought. Years and years but she never forgot how he felt inside her, how good it was to wrap her legs around his waist. His rhythm was somethng she could never forget, as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. 

4\. 

The secret weekend at the borrowed house in Easthampton, huge, echoing rooms with white walls and ugly abstract art. The master bedroom had a skylight and he remembers how the sun would pour through in the mornings, how it set her pale hair on fire. He remembers drowsy morning lovemaking, her eyes closed and mouth open as she rode him as if she had all the time in the world. For three days, they did.

5\. 

The last night in Vancouver together, this time older and supposedly wiser. They kept trying to sleep but neither wanted to let go, even for a few hours for much-needed rest. She traced his profile with the tip of her finger, traced the features she’d come to love so, after all this time - the arguments, the silent periods, the brief periods of grace. After all this time, she didn’t want to leave again, but her car to the airport was due at 9 am. London and Rajasthan awaited. When he entered her for the last time, at least the last time for months and months, she choked down shameful tears and tried to stay in the moment, to stay with him as they moved together.


	7. the intolerant brightness of your charms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

She wakes early, her exhausted eyes protesting the morning sun sneaking through the curtains. Still, it’s comforting to wake in her own bed, wrapped in sheets she actually bought herself. There have been too many hotels lately, far too many mornings blinking awake in the generic surroundings of a rented room. Even though she rarely stays in this house anymore, it’s hers through and through. It reassures her. She’s home, here in Vancouver, the first city she ever was able to call entirely her own. 

Jet lag is her default state of body and mind these days. She’s either on a plane acquiring it, enduring its active state, or just getting over it and about to board yet another plane. 

She rolls over onto her side and watches him sleep. He has the uncanny ability to sleep anytime, anywhere, sleep like the proverbial dead. He rarely has to cross as many time zones as she, but even so, jet lag never seems to touch him. He closes his eyes and he’s gone, sunk into deep slumber. Only several alarms, set to eardrum-shattering volume, will wake him. She’s envious of that particular gift of his. 

He sleeps on his stomach, face turned to the side and mashed into the pillow. It’s chilly on this June Vancouver morning and she pulls the duvet up from the foot of the bed, where it migrated overnight. She covers herself in cotton and goose down and daydreams about a silent, efficient servant to bring her coffee and fresh fruit. My kingdom for Kenyan roast and strawberries, she thinks. 

She watches the rise and fall of his bare back as he breathes in a steady, measured cadence. It’s a small, silly pleasure to watch him asleep. Sometimes when they’re apart and she has trouble sleeping, she tries to imagine him lying next to her, lost in his dreams. 

The skin on his back is sprinkled with tan freckles and the occasional small mole and scar, mementoes of more than half a decade of life—of running, swimming, and surfing in the California sunshine. She touches a cluster of freckles on his shoulder blade, watching as the muscles under his skin tense in autonomic response. 

With her index finger, she traces a star on the middle of his back. She draws a crescent moon, a heart, a diamond. She hopscotches from freckle to freckle, trying to memorize every inch of his skin. Three months in Vancouver felt like forever when she was home in London but now that’s she’s finally here, she realizes how brief it really is. Soon enough she’ll be on another plane, first to England and then to India. She’ll want to remember this rare and precious gift of time. 

She presses her cheek against his skin and closes her eyes. For a long time she is still, content to breathe with him as morning breaks over Vancouver.


	8. you open always petal by petal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

Scully bites into the sandwich and shards of crisp baguette crust rain down on the sheets. “I think you picked an unfortunate choice of a post-coital meal,” she says around a mouthful of barbecued pork and pickled carrot and daikon.

“You lack a sense of adventure,” Mulder says, his fingers idly twining in her hair. “Did you know there’s a new invention called the vacuum cleaner? All the cool kids have one nowadays.”

“Hmm…I’ll have to check that out. Sounds complicated.”

Everything sounds complicated at this particular moment, except eating bánh mì and luxuriating in this gray and quiet Saturday afternoon. She feels like she just had an hour-long deep tissue massage, her muscles turned to gelatin, her skin flushed after the slow worship of his fingers and mouth.

Mulder has crumbs sprinkled all over his chest. She almost, but not quite, blushes to remember what they’d been doing all afternoon. It’s all so new again, this coming together after almost three years apart. She never thought they’d ever fight their way through the darkness to find each other again.

She swallows the last bite of her sandwich. “How many of these did you buy?” she says, her stomach still rumbling.

“A half dozen. I remembered how hungry you get…after.”

There are some things you never forget, she thinks. Even through the wildnerness years, when she lived and slept alone, she never forgot how Mulder tasted, the sound of his breathing quickening when he was about to come, the feel of the muscles of his back under her hands. Sometimes she tried to forget. She went on the occasional date with another man. She drank a lot of wine. She went to therapy twice a week. She even took up yoga. But she never forgot and she never will.

Mulder sets his half-eaten bánh mì on its paper wrapper. “Come here,” he says, his voice low and soft.

Scully scoots closer to him and kisses him. He tastes like cilantro and limeade. She never wants to live without this again, never wants another sleepless night merely imagining his kiss. 

When she finally pulls away from his mouth, her lips and tongue burn. “The jalapeños,” she says accusingly, touching her swollen lower lip. She’d been sensible and ordered her sandwiches without.

His eyebrows rise. “Just imagine what I could do to you right now,” he says in a tone of mock menace.

She takes a quick sip of limeade to soothe the burn. “You want to spend another night with me in the ER?”

“It’ll be like the good old days,” he says. “Date night at the hospital.”

“Besides, you already spent a good forty-five minutes doing that. Eat your bánh mì instead.” She can see she’ll still have to be the voice of reason in this marriage.

“But you’re much tastier, Scully.”

When she kisses him again, she welcomes the small burn of the peppers. 

His fingers find the chain around her neck and clasp around the ring. “I can’t believe you wore this all this time,” he says. She’s not sure in the dim light but there may be tears in her eyes.

“I never took it off.”

“Maybe someday…do you think? Do you think you would…?”

She slips the chain from around her neck and the gold links puddle in her hand. “I think today,” she says, lifting her chin. She hands him the chain and ring.

“Are you sure?” he asks and she understands his hesitation. It’s been a long road back to each other again, full of bends and twists and the occasional pothole. But this moment, as they sit in her bed, covered with baguette crumbs, feels right. Finally.

He takes her hand and slips the cool gold band on her ring finger. “With this ring…” he whispers.

“With this ring,” she repeats and kisses him. 

Her stomach rumbles, so loud it makes Mulder startle. “Now give me another bánh mì,” she says. “Are there any meatball left?”

“Such a romantic, Scully,” he says, rummaging through the plastic bag of sandwiches.

“Only for you,” she says. “You and Vietnamese food, of course. But next time, I suggest summer rolls. Delicious and far less likely to create crumbs.”


	9. the superior dust-of-sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully/Skinner, Mulder/Scully

She feels human for the first time in years, flushed with pleasure and fully inhabiting her body.

From the bedroom she can hear the waves crashing on the rocks and the screech of seagulls. It reminds her of her childhood, of Yokosuka and Subic Bay and Norfolk and San Diego. She thinks about her honeymoon and the tiny seaside house they rented in Maine for five days. 

She feels safe and cozy, bundled beneath a thick duvet, her cheek pressed against the stubborn beating of his heart.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says, his fingers tangled in her hair.

“But it did,” she says.

He doesn’t fully understand, not yet. How the years of worry and stress have etcched those lines under her eyes and around her mouth. How she drives down to the old house every few weeks with a frozen lasagne in the trunk of her car, her stomach knotted. How her rings sit in her jewelry box, dully shining every time she opens it. 

How love can strain and fray but it never dissolves entirely.

She’s learned many lessons over the last five years, all of them difficult and true.

“Are you going to be all right?” he says. His voice, so familiar even in this dark room, like something out of a dream.

“Of course.” If nothing else, she’s a survivor. They all are, veterans of a secret war. “What about you, Skinner?”

He laughs and presses his warm lips to her forehead. She smiles for what feels like the first time in forever.


	10. whitest hands of waiting years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

Bing Crosby is crooning “White Christmas” on the stereo while outside the kitchen windows a light snow is swirling. Her kitchen smells like vanilla and almond extract from the batch of cookies she just pulled from the oven. She feels like a superhero version of Martha Stewart, a crack markswoman who can also wield a spritz gun with casual aplomb.

She opens a bottle of Syrah and pours a healthy slug into a wineglass, one of the few rescued from the great moving disaster. It tastes like sun-warmed berries and earth, warming her throat as it goes down.

Time to start the lasagne. No shortcuts for her. It all starts with the sauce, the family recipe of her college roommate Angela Ferrucci. She can operate on automatic pilot with this red sauce. The memory of it lives in her hands and fingers - sautee onion, garlic and a bit of carrot in olive oil, add crushed San Marzano tomatoes, basil, oregano, red pepper flakes, and a bay leaf. A sprinkle of sea salt and several grinds of black pepper. Toss in a splash of wine, if one feels like wasting decent wine. Let simmer for a long time, long enough to take a self-indulgent bath in a cloud bubbles, long enough for the sauce to thicken and make the entire apartment smell like herbs and spices.

She throws on her oldest, softest robe and pads to the kitchen to mix ricotta cheese with egg and parmesan. The wind has picked up, howling outside the window and she shivers a little. 

First a layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan, then layers of noodles, ricotta, sauce, and mozarella. She repeats this three times, until the pan is full. Then she adds a thick coating of mozarella and parmesan to the top. She stands back to admire her handiwork. Beautiful, Dr. Scully, she thinks. She pours another glass of wine to celebrate.

She doesn’t put the lasagne in a hot oven to bake. Instead, she carefully wraps it in layers of plastic and places it in the depths of the freezer. Tonight isn’t the night. Tonight she’ll make a green salad, maybe boil an egg or two. An austere Christmas Eve dinner to be sure, but that’s all right. She’s used to denying herself pleasure.

Tomorrow she’ll take that lasagne from the freezer and carefully place it in the trunk of her car, along with a bag of lettuce and bottles of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, perhaps a plastic container of cookies too. She’ll drive south on I-95. Maybe she’ll play Christmas songs on the radio. Maybe she’ll even sing along.

More than two hours later, she’ll arrive at the old house at the end of a dirt road. She’ll take the lasagne from the trunk and walk up to the front door. She’ll knock at the door of the house where she lived for so many years. 

He’ll answer the door, his face stubbled, his eyes shy and sad. She’ll wish him a merry Christmas, the lasagne in her hands like a gift, like an offering. Like an apology.

If she’s lucky, he’ll invite her in for dinner.


	11. a quick forest filled with sleeping birds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson

“You were kind of a lemur tonight,” he says and passes Gillian the joint. Yes, he still smokes joints instead of vaping or whatever the kids are doing these days. He’s old school when it comes to his weed and he makes no apologies.

Her eyebrow arches. “A lemur?” she asks, surprisingly crisply after three hits from the joint, her voice just a mere hair from her born-again English accent.

He doesn’t dare look at her, because she’ll either make him want to start laughing hysterically or he’ll be so turned on he might just die. Instead, he stares out the windows of his Yaletown temporary apartment, stares at the slightly blurry, twinkling lights of pre-dawn Vancouver. After so many years, they’re actually there again. He’s stopped being surprised by the odd and beautiful twists and turns of his life.

“Yeah, a lemur. Clinging to me like that with the ET crew shooting.” A weirdly sexy lemur in a tailored suit and three-inch heels, but a lemur all the same.

The couch shifts as she moves incrementally closer to him. If he leans maybe an inch closer he’ll be able to smell her perfume and her hair, which is in wild disarray after being imprisoned in its Scully wig for sixteen hours. He’s more than aware of the hard-on straining against the fabric of his jeans.

“You loved it,” she says with a soft laugh. She hands the joint back to him.

He takes one last drag, holding the thick smoke deep in his chest. Just a few months ago he was alone in LA, thinking about nights like this with his hand on his cock. He exhales, thinking about how much better it is to be with her in person. Three dimensional Gillian is frustrating, more than a bit nuts, silly, oddly brilliant, generous, and so sexy she has the ability to knock him into a semi-conscious state with just a certain sidelong look in her blue eyes.

“Maybe I didn’t,” he says, just to be contrary.

“Bullshit. You only smile like that when you’re ridiculously happy.”

He turns to her and feels that same smile growing on his face. “Having any lemur-like feelings now?”

Her tongue drags slowly across her full lower lip. “Oh, David,” she says. “Don’t you know I’ll always be a lemur with you?”


	12. thy body to me is april

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For jackieisboring, who made me [the most amazing X-Files fanvid ever.](http://jackieisboring.tumblr.com/post/140522475894/sorrow-xfiles-fanvid-video-jackieisboring%22)

Mulder paces the bathroom, three steps forward and three back. Small and narrow, Scully’s bathroom is not the best room for agitated pacing. He feels like he could run ten miles at a full sprint, through the rainy streets of D.C., even on his creaky knee. Adrenaline surges through his veins.

This is stupid, he thinks, stopping to look at himself in the mirror over the sink. This is so, so stupid. He’s left Scully in her bed, clad only in black lace panties and visibly panting. Left her, claiming a need to pee (and he imagines she made a mental note: on Monday schedule prostate exam for Mulder), and fled to the bathroom like a Victorian bride on her wedding night. Stupid.

It’s been eight hundred and seventy-two days since they last made love. Not that he’s kept track (except he definitely did). Eight hundred and seventy-two days since he’s had sex with an actual human being, instead of his right hand and a little something or other from PornHub. He’s fifty-five years old—gray creeping into his dark hair, lines hooding his eyes, arthritis brewing in his knee and elbow, just a hint of jowls forming. 

He swishes electric blue Listerine in his mouth. God forbid he should taste like garlic from tonight’s falafel. He splashes cold water on his face. It’s just too much. Scully, somehow more beautiful than she’s ever been in her life, is waiting for him in bed. Just three minutes ago, she had her soft hand wrapped around his cock, her tongue in his mouth, her skin smelling like vanilla and cloves. And he chickened out, struck by the reality of the moment. After more than two years apart, this is the moment. This is it.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath at his reflection. 

He’s not quite sure he’s up to the task. What if he can’t keep it up? What if he comes too soon? What if, worst scenario of all, he can’t make Scully come? What if, what if, what if, what if?

A light tapping at the door startles him from his panicked reverie. “Mulder, are you all right?” she says.

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s great,” he replies, taking a deep breath. “I’ll be right out.”

He opens the door and she’s standing there, wrapped in a silky red robe. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lies.

She touches his arm. “I could feel you worrying all the way down the hall. It’s okay. I’m nervous, too.”

“It’s been a long time, Scully.”

“Yeah.” She wraps her silky arms around his bare waist and presses her cheek to his chest. “Yeah,” she sighs. 

He kisses the top of her head. “You’re sure you’re ready?”

She lifts her blue eyes to his and nods. “Let’s go to bed, Mulder.” 

He smiles and a small thrill runs through his stomach. Whatever happens, it’s time. It’ll be all right.

She takes him by the hand and leads him down the hall to her bedroom.


	13. all her beauty is a vise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

Through the window, and even over the wheeze of the ancient air conditioner, he can hear an endless stream of cars zooming down the interstate, even at 3:00 a.m. Two drunks seem to be arguing about a bus ticket to Syracuse and possibly holding a contest to see how many empty beer bottles they can chuck in the parking lot. But Mulder doesn’t care. In this ugly motel room, that reeks of mildew and four decades of heavy smokers, is paradise.

Scully flops onto her back and in the half-light he can just barely make out the flicker of a smile on her face. Her smile, so rarely earned, so gratefully received. She blinks at him through matted, sleepy lashes. “What are you doing” she asks, her voice raspy with sleep.

“Watching you,” he says and immediately regrets it. It probably sounds creepy.

That smile again, instantly turning her into the young woman he first met twenty-two years ago, attempting to look serious and capable in her suit and sensible heels.

He sinks down to the mattress and settles his head against her soft upper arm. 

“This is nice,” she says with a drowsy sigh.

“Tell me a secret,” he says, closing his eyes. Now they are no longer apart, he wants to know all of them.

He hears her soft chuckle. “What kind of secret?” she says.

“I don’t care. Something…anything.”

There is a long silence, where all he can hear is the whine of a police siren and another crash of glass against asphalt.

“I never,” she finally says. “I never…” Her voice trails off and he wonders if she’s fallen back asleep.

His index finger traces the proud curve of her nose. “You never what?” he asks, a catch in his throat.

“I never stopped loving you, Mulder.” Her voice is so soft, almost maternal in its care.

Mulder’s breath comes out in one long whoosh. For maybe the first time in his overly verbal life, he’s stunned to the point of speechlessness. She loved him, past tense. She loves him, present tense.

He finds her hand and squeezes it with his own. “That’s a good secret, Scully,” he says.

She smiles again, her eyes fluttering closed, and he watches her, lost in his paradise once again.


	14. you asked me to come it was raining a little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

This feels like old times, driving white-knuckled through Washington’s pea soup rush hour traffic, alternately biting her lip and swearing under her breath. 

A bread delivery truck blocks her from turning left. “Get out of my fucking way! This is an EMERGENCY!” This time she doesn’t swear under her breath but shouts at the top of her lungs out the window in the direction of the truck, no doubt traumatizing a gaggle of small children in Catholic school uniforms waiting for the light to change.

She wonders how many times this has happened, the phone call from an emergency room, briefly explaining the disaster/accident/act of violence/act of aliens/act of God that has landed Mulder once more in the hospital, oh and Agent Scully, the situation is serious so as his emerency contact/next of kin it would be in your best interest to get here as soon as possible.

Over the last twenty-two years she’s lost count - the hematomas, the gunshot wounds, the lacerations, the mysterious fevers, the comas, the sutures, the broken and shattered bones and nerves. How many liters of blood lost? How many sleepless nights curled into an uncomfortable chair by his bedside?

This goes for him as well as for her, she’s all too aware.

Sometimes she wonders if her love for him began as a form of imprinting, so many minutes and hours and days spent in hospitals with him, an ersatz wife keeping vigil over his pale and anguished body, listening to the beep-beep-beep of the monitors, the whoosh of the respirator. She suffered like a lover untl she truly began to love the man in the hospital gown, the man who would eventually open his eyes and smile crookedly to see her there.

The truck finally pulls out of her lane and she hits the gas. She touches the gold cross around her neck as a form of brief prayer, yet another supplication to the heavens even though she’s not always sure anyone is up there listening. 

“Breathe,” she says to the empty car, imagining dark blood seeping from his wounds. “Just breathe, Mulder.” 

She inhales for him. She exhales. 

She’ll breathe for him until he can do it himself.


	15. this silver minute of evening

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven rings and her voice mail picked up. “You’ve reached the phone of Special Agent Dana Scully. I cannot take your call at this…” Mulder pressed End on his phone and swore. Twelve calls and she hadn’t yet picked up.

His scalp tingled with fear. Scully always, _always_ answered her cell phone. If not on the first call, she definitely would on the second. Even if it were almost midnight on a Friday, she’d answer, her voice amused and annoyed at the same time.

Mulder’s heart pounded in his chest as he ran two red lights in a row. He remembered the night Duane Barry took her all too well. He’d been too late that night, what if he was again? No, no,  no, he would not be too late. Not this time.

He double-parked outside her building and tried her phone one more time. She’d told him that afternoon that she planned to spend the night watching the _Pride and Prejudice_ miniseries. Yet again, no answer. So where the hell was she?

His hand was shaking as he knocked on her door, softly at first and then louder. No sounds through the door, no footsteeps or a sleepy, “Is that you, Mulder?”

Fitting the key in the lock he remembered the day she gave it to him and how she’d gravely said, “This is for emergencies.” This was an emergency, he reassured himself.

It was dark and quiet as he tiptoed through her living room. He switched on the lamp near her couch. Nothing appeared out of order; no signs of struggle.

And then he heard something, something that flooded his entire body with adrenaline and horror. A female voice, moaning. Scully’s voice, a low, ragged moan. She was in pain, she was in danger, she was… He sprinted towards her bedroom and flung open the door to save her.

For a fleeting moment he imagined he saw her body in lit only by the bedside lamp, flung across the bed, splashed crimson with her blood, her eyes blank and unseeing. But then his imaginary Scully became the real Scully, sitting up in bed, her eyes wide with surprise, her mouth opening.

She’s naked, he thought frantically, don’t look at her, don’t stare at her breasts, oh my God, she’s not alone, her cheeks and chest are pink, her lips are swollen, whatever you do do not stare at her breasts…

Scully wasn’t alone. Another body was in bed with her, its dark head between Scully’s thighs, her _thighs,_ and the head lifted and he saw the astonished face of a pretty young woman, her face somehow familiar.

Oh, fuck, he thought, his stomach sinking. She’s not in pain, she’s…she’s fucking someone. He started backing out of the room. “I’m sorry, Scully,” he mumbled, turned and fled for the door.

Out at his car, it seemed to take him an hour to fish his car keys from his pocket and another hour to get them to fit in the door lock. 

“Mulder!”

He turned to see her standing on the sidewalk, wearing a red flannel bathrobe and barefoot on this cool late autumn night. 

“Well, this is awkward,” he said, not able to meet her eyes. “I thought you were in trouble, I called you for almost an hour straight and you didn’t pick up and I thought…”

“As you can see, Mulder, I’m fine.” She bit her lip.

“Who _is_ she?” he heard himself asking. Fine. Of course she was fine. She was better than fine, really. He felt something flare in his spine.

“Clarice,” she said with a short sigh. “My roommate at the Academy.”

“Clarice Starling?” He knew that name, he knew, and then he remembered _why_ he knew it. “The one who caught Buffalo Bill?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” She stopped and shook her head. “You know what? This isn’t really your business, Mulder.”

He attempted to smile but was sure it came out a death’s head rictus. “Okay. We can talk about this on Monday.”

“No, we won’t talk about this on Monday. The only talk we’ll be having is about boundaries. Good night,” she said and turned on her heel.

Mulder opened the car door and got inside. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Well, that was awkward, he thought, shaking his head at himself. That was awkward, indeed.


	16. on such a night the sea through her blind miles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder/Scully

He wakes in the middle of the night, gasping for air, with no idea where he is. He’s in a bedroom, he’s relatively sure of that. There’s a bed, a pillow under his neck, soft sheets, a down comforter covering his body. The room smells unfamiliar, like old wood and something sweeter, perfume maybe. Lavender? The room is warm but he’s shivering, his body covered in a million goosebumps, his teeth chattering.

He’s naked. He never sleeps naked, not since… He’s naked and he’s lost time. Was he taken again, his body lifted to a great craft in the sky and later returned to this strange room?

Sitting bolt upright, he stifles the urge to scream into the dark room. It’s happened again. He thought they’d left him alone for good the night he was dumped in the woods, left for dead. Left for dead and buried, six feet in the cold ground. But they took him once more. He’ll never be safe again. He shuts his eyes tight, shivering.

“Mulder?” A soft voice interrupts his reverie. He knows that voice. He loves that voice.

He feels a warm hand touch his shoulder. “Mulder, are you all right?”

It’s coming back to him now. He’s safe, he’s all right, he’s in his bedroom—not the apartment in Alexandria where he lived for so many solitary years but the bedroom he now shares with Scully in the Virginia countryside. His home. Their home.

Scully presses her face against his bare back. “It was just a dream,” she murmurs. “Just a dream. You’re safe, Mulder. You’re with me.” He feels small kisses down his spine.

Even, easy breaths, he tells himself. In and out and in and out and…He feels his heartbeat eventually slow to near normal.

She tugs at his arm until he finds himself lying on his side, her chest pressed against his back, her fingers stroking his hair.

It happened almost five years ago. He should be over it, sleeping deeply and not waking Scully in the wee hours of the morning when she gets so little sleep as it is with her schedule. Why can’t he be normal? Shouldn’t it get better with time? “I’m sorry,” he mumbles into the pillow.

“Shhh,” she whispers in his ear. “Shh… There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I don’t mean to…I don’t want…”

“Stop it. Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.” Her voice is gentle but firm.

His eyelids feel heavy, much too heavy to keep open. He’s safe, for now, in her arms and she’s with him. Always.


End file.
